


Orpheus

by ChaosMidge (NotQuiteInsane)



Series: Wilde Week 2020 [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Except Bertie, F/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/pseuds/ChaosMidge
Summary: Day 4 - “To live is the rarest thing in the world.”Life | Death | SurvivalPost crash reminiscences and resolutions.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde, Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith, Sasha Racket/Oscar Wilde
Series: Wilde Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020070
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19
Collections: A Wilde Week 2020





	Orpheus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desilite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desilite/gifts).



> I blaaaaaame makesometime.
> 
> barely edited, a day late because _reasons_ but I'm working this week so please don't hate me /o\

The north is cold and it is open in a way that Sasha has never seen before. The English countryside was open. The dessert was open.

But up in the sky, with nothing but clouds around them and the hulking spines of mountains and dead colossi to break up the landscape.

The aurora borealis was beautiful, if terrifying, though they all came out of it more or less unscathed.

It's what comes after that...

Sasha had been upset when they'd approached the wreck of the Reliant in Hiroshima. She had been enthusiastic in its reconstruction, following Cel's every order with a precision to detail rivaled only by Cel themself.

The process of wrecking is exhilarating, exciting, if destructive.

It's what comes after that...

It's when she pushes her head through the snow through which she slid to a safe stop and looks around for Wilde, to ask if he saw that, to tell him how much fun that was—

Zolf finds him first and stands in shellshocked silence.

When Sasha comes upon him, grabs his arm to ask what he's looking at, heart still pounding from the adrenaline of the fall and the tuck and roll, he pulls her down into a tight embrace and she freezes.

"Zolf, wot...?"

He takes her face between his hands, his cold, _cold_ hands and looks her straight in the eye. “Do not look up. Do you hear me, Sasha? _Do not look up_.”

There’s a—well she doesn’t know what to call it. She’s never seen this set to his face before, never heard this tone or anything approaching it. His hands are rough on her skin from ship’s work and familiar, so familiar. She doesn’t struggle as she once might have, doesn’t question why he feels the need to trap her now, trap her like _this_. She trusts him. A trust born of the many months spent in each others’ company, in reconnecting after Rome, in sharing meals and training and quiet words.

Sasha _knows_ Zolf. She knows him back to front, inside out.

But she doesn’t know this face that he’s making. She doesn’t know what could possibly be so important about not looking up that he would make a face she doesn’t know.

That scares her more than the multitude of images that flash through her head, imaginings of what she’ll see if she looks up. _When_ she looks—

Sasha Racket pulls her face out of Zolf’s grip and looks up.

She looks up and up and her eyes trace over the piece of the ship that’s fallen and embedded itself in the snow, over the scrap metal and spikes that Earhart demanded be attached to the ship—in case of aggressive aerial maneuvers, she’d said.

Her eyes trace over the body impaled upon them, at its still face and the look of surprise frozen upon it—as though he hadn’t quite had time to figure out what had happened.

Sasha feels her breath leave her.

She feels…

She…

Zolf tugs her back around, forcing her eyes from the tableau above them and pulls her down. Her arms hang limp, unable to return the hug, unable to do anything but feel the emptiness of her lungs.

She thinks it’s her lungs, at least.

It hurts in the same place as her lungs.

And at the same time she’s dizzy so it would make sense if it were her lungs that weren’t working properly. It’s… it’s her lungs up under her ribcage and—and—

“It’s… Zolf, it’s… gone right through him. I’m—we have to—to help him? He needs healing. I’m—”

But she doesn’t move, doesn’t try to extricate herself from his arms. They feel like the only thing keeping her tethered, the only thing keeping her together, keeping her entrails from following through the hole where her heart has been ripped out of her—

Zolf holds her even as she drops to her knees on the cold ground. Even as she turns her head to look back up at the body of Oscar Wilde.

Sasha remembers that first time she’d met Oscar Wilde.

(Her knife to his throat had been a threat, had been a promise, even if she hadn’t known the full context of the promise at the time. Even though the promise had changed over time, with the glint of a challenge in his eye meaning something quite different as they grew to understand each other.)

His humor and quick smiles and unerring _concern_ for them had been as unexpected as his appearance at Hamid’s apartment, that first time. Charming. But not like Barrett had been charming. Not sharpened and honed and bloodied with the lives of the hundreds under his command—

Perhaps not so different when put in those terms, but when she compares the men in any other way, it’s impossible to think of them together in the same sentence.

Where Barrett had been a threat, had been fear and mistrust and one broken promise after another, always covered over with honeyed words hiding the bitterness of more poison—and he had taught her poisons as well as knives and shadows, even if she didn’t like to use the former—Wilde was a promise, a razor wit that hid the depths of his sentiment and the true sweetness of understanding beneath.

A study in inverses.

As much to unlearn over the course of a few months as had been burned into her by a lifetime of studying the fire.

But Sasha is glad she’d chosen to untie that knot inside of her. The knot in her chest that pulled her short every time she tried to reach out and trust.

She wanted to trust her new friends in London, wanted to think that they weren’t another of Barrett’s schemes. And the lengths that they had gone to protect her from her uncle had put slack in her line, had allowed her to put the work in and untangle just a little bit of the feelings inside her.

And Wilde… Wilde, with barriers woven of years of watching the worst of humanity, woven as a shield to protect his own kindness, his own complex, kind, _human_ heart—

He surprised her. So many times he surprised her.

Apophis’ revelation of his estimation of the party wasn’t the first time he surprised her, but it was one of the ones that had struck deep. So it was that later that day, when he was about to disappear from the al-Tahan estate with her still knee deep in the uncertainty of her fate, that she caught his arm and looked into his eyes. He paused and looked back at her, clearly not having expected this.

She looked into his eyes and she tried to find any poison, any bitterness behind the honey feelings in her chest, any sign of a noose in the loosening of that knot in her chest.

And she found nothing.

In Damascus, it was clear that Wilde was not okay.

But he spoke with her. He laughed and taught her the art of punning and the joy in twisting words not as a knife, but as a braid—beautiful in a different way and not so deadly.

Sasha thought she could learn to love the beauty of both. To trust the strength of a braid well woven and cared for.

And like a shadow, but unlike the poison of her past, she crept into his tent and they looked at one another. She looked and still saw no sign of the noose, no sign of a web of lies woven for her and her alone. No sign of poison dripping from hidden fangs, hidden blades.

She saw only a man with weariness on his shoulders like a cloak and a fondness in his eyes that was so very _human_.

They reached an understanding there and continued to learn each other, Sasha daring to ask about things she’d never trusted another enough to ask, Wilde understanding her limits and the flavor of curiosity in her desire.

When Sasha returned from Rome to find eighteen months had passed, to find Wilde’s cloak of weariness become armor of mistrust, she sees herself reflected in it. She sees a version of herself that he had helped her to overcome.

And so the dance began anew and they retraced their steps. For Sasha the twists and turns were so familiar, still so recent. And though Wilde knew the tune and could play it for kings, Sasha had to take the lead to get him to _move_ to that delicate, wandering beat.

Wilde followed. Reluctantly at first, but then with more confidence, with more enthusiasm, with more joy.

By the time they were aboard the Vengeance—even though Sasha knew it still for the Reliant it was—they were deep in the magic of the dance again. They danced with one another, not just one leading and the other following, but as a partnership. As an intuition born of experience and trust.

Sasha’s eyes would glitter as she slipped into his berth at Hamid’s departure, a shadow through the door before it closed. Wilde only smiled at this, asked her what tune they might play that evening, and laughed as Sasha chose the steps.

If she managed a bit of a verse, a pun, a tangling of wit in the tangle of limbs that Wilde taught her could be a comfort, could be a sweetness without poison, could be as sharp as a knife with none of the deadliness— _Only the smallest of deaths, darling_ , which made even her gutter French heart _sing_ —then that was between them. It only added to the dance, after all. Only added to the music.

But now, as they lay out the bodies of their fallen, of their _friends_ , Sasha thinks that she can no longer feel the knot in her chest. It has been torn out, discarded by the whims of fate.

Perhaps the slackening of the line had been the path to a noose all along?

But no.

The only ropes are bonds of her own choosing. She’s made sure of that. And this is one bond she refuses to have torn from her, to have cut from her chest and burned on the pyre that was her scorched upbringing. She refuses to let that blackness back into her heart.

So when Sohra comes on eagle wings and offers Sasha the chance to retrieve her—love? No. Friend? _Always_ —she takes it without hesitation. Cel looks ready to offer themself for whatever fee may be levied against them, but Sasha cuts them off with a sharp word, a maneuvering as deft as any Wilde’s words, that Cel backs off.

She will _not_ lose Wilde.

Zolf catches her arm and doesn’t need to ask if she’s sure. He knows the determination in her gaze, has seen it in the way she’d hung onto Grizzop and Azu during that last fateful planeshift, has seen it as far back as Paris—with the loss of her oldest friend and real the subsequent closure that was granted to her by Mr Ceiling.

They both know that there is no closure to _this_ —not like this—and Sasha will be _damned_ if she lets herself feel that way for one more second than necessary.

And so they follow Sohra to the Ursan city. They follow her onto the back of a great bear, walk the pathways of that city, so unfamiliar yet so much like the cramped alleys of Other London where Sasha had learned her craft. She’s alert to everything, eyes darting from side to side, taking in the people and possible threats, tense with the anticipation of a trap.

But she needs this. She needs Wilde back.

And so she follows this stranger into the heart of this strange town and to the circular building that she hopes will be the water break for the edges of that slowly burning hollow in her chest.

When Sohra asks who will guide each soul, she steps forward for Wilde. Zolf looks like he wants to argue, but the hardness in her eyes brokers none of it.

“I’ll get him back, Zolf. For both of us. I know… what he means to you, yeah? You had longer with him than us. I… I understand how that is, right?” She nods, mostly to herself, but partly to Zolf. She still remembers the awe in his eyes when he got her back, the frown lines that faded from his brow. She knows he understands.

And isn’t that strange, how one understanding can lead to another?

“Sasha,” Zolf says, pulling her down to share the words between them and them only. “You’ve both got people waiting for you, yeah? Come back in one piece. Or two, if you’ve got him with you.”

She shoots him smile, dark eyes and bright teeth glinting. The burn scar on her cheek stretches and she can see as his eyes widen, as he sees so much of Wilde in that smile that she _knows_ he can’t doubt her conviction. “Who d’you think you’re talking to, mate? I’ve got this.”

The ritual begins.

The incense is not unpleasant, but it is unfamiliar. There is no telling when exactly Sasha succumbs to its spell, but she knows that when she opens her eyes, she is nowhere different but with everything changed. The sounds of the city are muffled in a way that alerts her to something magical. She rises with the fluidity of a shadow on midnight waters and flows from the temple.

There’s a directionality to everything. She doesn’t know how else to put it. Whether that’s her innate sense of _how cities work_ coming into play or something else, she decides to trust it. That’s what Wilde has always been to her, right? A reason to trust, a reason to follow her twisted heart to the end of its tether and then reach for more.

She finds him at the edge of the city, staring out into the barren landscape, staring back toward the wreck of the _Vengeance_ —she still can’t think of it as anything but the _Reliant_ and remembers him getting kicked off of it back in Paris. He appears as a specter in her vision, a hollow shell of the vibrant man he was, almost fluttering in the wind off the plains.

It feels… wrong.

He shouldn’t be this thin, this flimsy.

He’s always been strong in her eyes, whatever that means in the moment.

Strong enough to fight, strong enough to joke, strong enough to be a rock when she needs it.

Strong enough to trust her with himself as much as she trusted him with herself.

“Wilde?”

He doesn’t turn, doesn’t fix her with that coy smile reserved only for her, doesn’t begin their usual dance with a word or a step or note to guide her.

“Oi, mate, you there? Wilde?”

“It’s all so far away,” he says and his voice sounds distant. It’s so unfamiliar as to be uncanny.

But then, everything about this place is uncanny. Everything is unfamiliar.

Except for Wilde.

Wilde she knows.

Sohra said this was meant to be a conversation.

Conversation is how she first learned to dance with Wilde.

“Not all,” Sasha points out. “I’m next to you.”

“But how can you be?”

Sasha doesn’t reach out to touch him, doesn’t feel the need. Touch has always been a loaded thing between them and Wilde doesn’t seem solid enough now to bear that burden.

“’S a long story. Best told over a drink, right?”

“Hm.”

He still hasn’t looked at her, still hasn’t turned to face her.

For some reason, this doesn’t bother her as much as it once might have.

“I know… it won’t help to tell you you’re missed,” she says finally, looking down at her feet. The toe of one of her boots is digging into the wood of the city’s foundation. “And I know you wouldn’t believe me if I said we needed you. So I’ll just… I’m gonna offer you this, yeah? A story. A story that I think was a song, but like, I don’t remember that bit more than a little. Maybe you can teach it to me? But… I need you to listen, okay?”

Wilde shifts on his feet, but says nothing.

It makes her heart ache.

But that in itself is something, isn’t it?

That she can feel the space beneath her ribs again as something more than a chasm, more than a loss of breath and integrity and—

“We _do_ need you, Wilde. But that’s… not the point, is it? The… the important bit is that I— _I_ have more to tell you. I have more puns I want to make, more, like, things to learn? And I don’t think I really want to do those without you? You’re my friend and that…” She trails off, still staring at the wood beneath her feet. “That means a lot to me. You know that. And… well. I just—I want you to know that this is your choice and I trust you. I trust in whatever choice _you_ want to make. So I’m going to leave now. And… and you can follow me. If you want. If that’s what you choose. Yeah?”

Sasha waits a moment, not looking at him, not expecting a response.

It feels like those days back in Japan, when she saw Wilde for the first time in—for him—eighteen months. Though this time the armor feels less like armor and more like a shroud, hiding rather than protecting.

Sasha turns her back on him and begins to walk back to the temple. Her steps are slow, containing her usual grace, though she makes sure not to keep to the shadows as she always does.

This is about trust.

And Sasha has nothing to fear from Wilde.

She has no need to hide anything from Wilde.

And so she walks.

The sky is a clear and muted blue above her—above them?—and she breathes in the scent of the wind.

It makes her smile.

Less wet dog than Other London, but wet bear is similar enough to send an echo of nostalgia through her.

An echo rippling from the gladness of having left it all behind, perhaps, but that’s alright.

The things behind her are not all bad.

Sasha doesn’t look back.

She doesn’t need to.

When Sasha wakes in the temple, chin on her chest, hands resting lightly on her knees, she takes a moment to breathe. A moment to stretch her neck, roll her head around, and feel for the weight of her knives across her chest before she opens her eyes.

Before her, Wilde lays still.

His hair is white.

And his chest moves up and down.

Her heart swells.

Sasha smiles, leans forward, and touches her forehead to his.

She can feel it when he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so makesometime posted the following in Rome and it stabbed me in the feels so I wrote the above. Suffer with me.  
>  _  
> [ORPHEUS]  
>  I have no ring for your finger  
> I have no banquet table to lay  
> I have no bed of feathers  
> Whatever promises I made  
> I can't promise you fair sky above  
> Can't promise you kind road below  
> But I'll walk beside you, love  
> Any way the wind blows_
> 
> _[EURYDICE]  
>  I don't need gold, don't need silver  
> Just bread when I’m hungry  
> Fire when I’m cold  
> Don't need a ring for my finger  
> Just need a steady hand to hold  
> Don’t promise me fair sky above  
> Don't promise me kind road below  
> Just walk beside me, love  
> Any way the wind blows  
> _


End file.
